Subject: Re: bug#54811: [PATCH 0/3] Support socket activation in 'guix publish' and 'guix-daemon'

From: Ludovic Courtès <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2022 22:33:12 +0200

Maxime Devos <[email-masked]> skribis:

> Ludovic Courtès schreef op ma 11-04-2022 om 11:48 [+0200]:
>> >    * bonus: except possibly for the secret key material, "guix
>> > publish"
>> >      does not have to be started  as root anymore even if uses a
>> >      reserved port such as port 80 (assuming socket activation is
>> > used).
>> 
>> But it does need to access the secret key…
>
> The ‘guix publish’ could be run as a separate, say, guix-publish user,
> and the secret key could be made readable to guix-publish.

That doesn’t sound reasonable.

> Alternatively, the shepherd could open the secret key file on behalf of
> ‘guix publish’ and send it together with the listening socket to ‘guix
> publish’.

Sure, that’s feasible, but that’d require a custom protocol that I’d
rather avoid.

As things are now, ‘guix publish’ drops privileges as soon as it has
opened the signing key anyway.

Ludo’.